Issues behind the ‘consensus’ of the political class

What divides our political class grabs the attention of the media more than what unites it. That is the nature of the beast. It feasts on high drama. Conflict, confrontation, antagonism, crisis: these alone whet its appetite. Consensus, on the other hand, is insipid fare that turns off readers and viewers. Or so the media reckon.

However, if the media cared to subject the consensus reached by political parties on any issue to careful scrutiny, they might discover high drama of another, more sinister sort. Take two recent examples. All major parties ganged up to ensure that they do not come under the purview of the Right to Information Act. And all made common cause to circumvent the Supreme Court’s directive that any member of Parliament who is convicted by a trial court to more than two years in prison should be disqualified.

The reason that accounts for the ‘consensus’ on the first count has been spelt out in a recent study of the income tax returns that six national parties filed with the Election Commission. Conducted by the Association for Democratic Reform (ADR), a non-governmental organisation, it reveals that these parties – the Congress, BJP, CPI(M), CPI, BSP and NCP – failed to declare a bulk of their income. Their cumulative income from 2004-05 to 2011-12 amounted to Rs.4895.96 crore. As much as Rs.3674.50 crore came from unnamed sources.

The ADR’s analysis of 31 elections held between 2008 and 2012 shows that the six parties received Rs.967.41 crore at their headquarters while the income of their state units was of the order of Rs. 1577.95 crore. A party-wise break-down of these figures is even more startling. More than 90 per cent of the funds received by the Congress at its headquarters were in cash and less than 10 per cent by cheque. Indeed, the Congress failed to declare the funds it got at its headquarters for as many as 14 elections out of 31. (Interestingly, while the Congress party’s funds declared at its headquarters stood at Rs.278.77 crore, the BSP received a considerably larger amount: Rs. 330.36 crore.)

Similarly, the NCP got more than 83 per cent funds in cash and just a little more than 16 per cent by cheque or demand draft. Its income between the announcement of the dates of the elections and their completion alone – an average of 115 days – was to the tune of Rs.2545.36 crore. In the 2009 elections, the BJP declared its income to be Rs.169.56 crore while the funds received by its state units crossed the Rs.445 crore mark.

The parties claimed that a bulk of the funds they received were from donations given in small amounts and that these were audited and presented to the Election Commission with certified copies. That was especially the stand of the BJP. But the treasurer of the Maharashtra unit of the NCP went on record to state that he was not duty-bound to reveal the sources of the cash donations. The president of this state’s Congress unit even argued that accepting donations was a ‘fundamental right’ of every political party.

Had the BJP and other parties that have been crying hoarse – and quite correctly too – of the many scams that have marked the tenure of the Congress-led UPA in office to agree to an RTI-driven scrutiny of the funding of the parties, their protests would have sounded that much more credible. But they chose to do otherwise. Such insouciance also explains why the major parties are most reluctant not to give candidates with criminal records – including charges of rape and murder – tickets in elections – let alone agreeing to the sacking of MPs and MLAs who are found guilty of serious misdemeanours in a trial court. Most of them in fact contribute to the coffers of the parties.

It is ‘consensus’ of this nature that exposes the disconnect between the collective interest of the political class and the public it claims to serve. To jettison every move that would lead to more transparency and accountability of governance is what such a ‘consensus’ amounts to. It overrides, in many respects, all other issues that attract media attention. This is a grave pity for, at stake, is the very health of our democracy.